Only to Sleep: A Philip Marlowe Novel

by Lawrence Osborne

  But hotels have ears. The ears are called waiters and bellboys.

  The boy serving tables on the terrace, for a quiet tip, advised me that Mrs. Linder came up there for breakfast very early, when no one was around.

  “How long has she been here?”

  “She arrived two days ago. This morning she called for a cab to take her to Tepeyac. That’s what the guys downstairs said.”

  He explained that it was a suburb with a famous church. It was in fact the great Basilica of Our Lady of Guadalupe.

  “Why would an American want to go there?” he said.

  It was a good question, I said. Perhaps she was a devout Catholic. And what time had she taken her breakfast? At six thirty. I told them I’d come there the following morning at the same time.

  For a moment he looked nervous, but he had taken the money. He nodded and I told him not to worry; she was an old friend.

  Eventually I went for dinner back on Calle Uruguay—one of those old dusty eateries with white-sauce enchiladas suizas near the hotel—and then walked up to Garibaldi using a map that the hotel had given me. The cantinas were in full swing, the mariachi strolling the plaza for tourist coin, and in one of those dens I soon found yet another Electrucador dispensing free shots for a free shock. So I went for it—it gave me a thrill. And afterward I went amok at a place where only men were drinking upright at the bar. Tequila, not a bad drink, and a few beers thrown in between. I grow old, I grow old, I will take my tequila bold. When dawn broke, however, I was already awake and dressed for a wedding.

  I walked back to the Gran Hotel and stopped first at the reception desk to inquire whether Mrs. Linder had had her breakfast yet. The girl looked up with eyes that held their own suspicions in check and deferred to a dapper old man with a cane.

  “Yes, sir. She already left.”

  “Damn, I missed her again. Did she go to Tepeyac?”

  She was surprised and her glance went to the door, where the boys stood waiting to hail taxis.

  “As a matter of fact, she did. Can we call you a taxi to go there as well?”

  “Why, that would be very kind of you.”

  “Para servirle. It takes about forty minutes to get there.”

  When I got to the door I asked them if they might happen to know where Mrs. Linder had asked to be taken in Tepeyac. It had been a religious goods store on a street called Calvario that catered to pilgrims visiting the basilica: unusual enough for the boys to remember without any hesitation at all.

  TWENTY-SIX

  The driver left me by a wax museum just in front of the basilica and told me how to find Calvario from there. It was a small street whose crooked and untamed trees seemed much older than the buildings behind them. In the middle of it stood a two-domed church and next to this lay a line of small shops, including a clinic and an old gate that led to the Hogar de Ancianos Santa María de Guadalupe. By it, the trees met in the middle of the road, covering it completely with shade. There was a nevería on the corner with bright ice-cream cones painted on its walls. Between the church and the hogar, meanwhile, lay the shop that corresponded to the address that the boys had written down for me. Its window was filled with votive candles, little plastic dolls of the Virgin in glittering capes, and what looked like sugar skulls. The shop had just opened and a middle-aged woman was turning on the lights inside her cavern of Catholic hope and kitsch. When I opened the door, a bell rang from deep inside the cavern of the shop. The woman looked up and I could tell that I was not in the usual run of her customers. I was suddenly sure that Dolores had been there just before me, and I decided to just ask the owner up front if that was the case.

  “There was no American here,” she said defiantly.

  “The person who was just here—where did they go?”

  “Everyone who comes here goes to the basilica afterward.”

  I began to notice that there were small figurines of the Virgin with scythes, female reapers that were unusual. Weren’t they the figures that Dolores had described as belonging to the Santa Muerte? Little shiny statues stood in rows, skeletons in silver and gold cowls and dresses holding scythes. Some were all white, some black. A few, slightly larger, were scarlet and green and the scythes had gold blades. Around them were blue and black candles and others that were banded in seven colors. The botánica section, the woman explained. A collection of folk medicine and magical amulets and spell-casting perfumes. The blue candles indicated wisdom; the black ones protected against black magic. Gold was for increasing prosperity.

  I showed her a photograph of Donald and she shook her head. And then it occurred to me that I had forgotten to bring one of Dolores.

  “Was it a woman?”

  The denial was less emphatic.

  So I had my answer, and I had suddenly realized something.

  “When did she leave? Was it less than ten minutes ago?”

  And against her better judgment she blinked while denying it.

  The glass shook as I closed the door behind me. I walked away as quickly as I could toward the basilica. Around the plaza, filled with both rubble and pilgrims, I sat there in the sun breathing in the thin air with difficulty. Dolores was almost certainly there among the crowds. I entered the church, which rose like a metal bedouin tent from the edge of the plaza opposite its sixteenth-century companion. Above the altar hung the veil in which the Indian saint Juan Diego had once gathered roses, itself imprinted with a mysterious image of the Virgin.

  Under it, in an automated ritual, a conveyor belt whisked the faithful under the relic to be blessed by it. Outside, loudspeakers boomed over from the markets nearby. It washed over an army of beggars and neatly groomed peddlers of Virgin memorabilia. And I moved through this crowd, sifting slowly through the cripples and the blind until—just as I turned away from the great metal tent—I saw her making her way toward the basilica.

  Dolores was dressed in black with a dark-green head scarf over her hair, low heels, and a white bag slung over her shoulder. Unaware of me or anyone around her, she walked slowly into the church and I followed her at a safe distance until she got onto the conveyor belt and was dragged slowly under the veil.

  She got up at the other end and went back into the nave and knelt among the wretched of the earth before crossing herself, turning, and then going back outside into the sunshine. She walked around to the bautisterio, near which stood an entrance to what I thought was a large park but which I soon saw was actually a cemetery. The cemetery of Tepeyac. It was crowded, but she went into the park, along a wide path filled with hundreds of people. Soon I was following her among the ponderous stone angels and the Père Lachaise–style family tombs and camposantos. She made her way to a grave somewhat removed from the crowds until I was only a few tombstones away from her.

  At that moment a tiny, oblong cloud unconnected to any others had appeared at the outer rim of the sun and was about to dim it. It shone like liquid silver and then, as it moved, the light decreased and her eyes moved upward and met mine. But there was no recognition. Exactly then a young man appeared as if out of nowhere, stepping up to her with the confidence of the familiar, and put his arm around her.

  TWENTY-SEVEN

  They walked arm in arm back to the plaza, and I kept them both in sight. He was a Mexican man of about thirty, well dressed and slender, a man capable of turning her into one half of a respectable couple. There was nothing remarkable about them in that respect, and despite the sudden disappointment I felt, I understood the logic. It was as if old age had finally come crashing down upon me in a square filled with penitents and cripples. I was old and they were young, and they had grace where I had none.

  They parted by the edge of the square—a quick kiss—and she walked back toward the religious goods shop. She went down Calvario without a care and hailed a taxi at the corner. An hour later we were both at the Gran Hotel and I got out at
the square and contrived to arrive there well after her.

  I stopped first at a chocolate shop and bought a small box of nougats. The boys were too busy to notice me when I came in through the lobby. I went to the reception desk and asked if I might send up the box to Mrs. Linder’s room or, if they preferred, they could tell me the room number and I could take it up myself. They were flooded with new arrivals and gave me the room number purely to disburden themselves of an extra task. It was a room on the third floor. I went up straightaway and waited until the corridor on either side was empty. Then I knocked on her door.

  When there was no response I considered asking one of the staff to knock for me. I wandered off until I found one of the room cleaners. Giving her the box, I asked her to take it back to the room and try again without telling the occupant who had given her the box.

  She returned a few minutes later saying she had delivered the box successfully. There was a beautiful young girl in the room and she had been very surprised to be given a box of nougats.

  “I’m secretly in love with her,” I whispered, holding a finger over my lips and winking.

  A half lie always works better than the full one.

  I pictured her opening the box, seeing the wrapped squares of nougat and the note I had written in the shop. Black Widow.

  I spent the rest of the day in my room, having already arranged with one of the doormen to call me if Dolores or her boy went out. No call came. I went up to the roof at the end of the afternoon and downed a succession of strong caipirinhas. My nougats had probably spooked her. Could she have guessed that her hunter was still on her heels and had broken his side of their agreement? It was now becoming even clearer that Donald had been left behind with no face in the abandoned house in Guanajuato. Had he still been with her, I would likely have left them to their devices. But it was a different tale now. Dolores had emerged into the new life she had probably been planning all along. Her motive must have been to invent a new life for herself and in this she had apparently succeeded. A new man, a new identity, her finances all lined up. Could there have been any serious reason to stay with the old man? Jealousy and hatred flashed inside me now, hatred for this new lover, for his youth, and the rage that comes with impotence. But when all that had subsided I didn’t mind that, in all likelihood, he was a good-looking chucklehead and he would only get to have her for a passing season. In the end, she would shed him just as well as she had shed Donald and me. Calm down bronco, I thought. She’s gone with the wind, and she likes it better that way. She, too, would grow old one day in a hidden villa with handsome servants, and I would already be dust on someone’s mantelpiece.

  And so the downstairs bar.

  There, a large helmsman in colorful suspenders and with perfect English manned the counter. It’s the one man in a hotel you can talk to. I asked him if he could make me a gimlet with Rose’s lime.

  “Nothing easier.”

  The place was deserted that night and he said a lot of guests were traveling to a place called Yautepec to visit the Carnival there and had left that night in private taxis. Some said it was the biggest Carnival in the world.

  “You don’t say. Where the hell is Yautepec?”

  “It’s to the left of a place called Tepoztlán. Don’t tell me you don’t know where Tepoztlán is.”

  “Never heard of it.”

  Then something occurred to me.

  “Is it south or north?”

  “Due south and over the mountains. About three hours if it isn’t raining.”

  “I’ve always wanted to go to a Carnival. It’s the one thing I never saw. I only saw them in movies.”

  “Don’t believe anything you see in movies.”

  “I don’t believe in anything else.”

  “Well, that’s your funeral. Here’s your gimlet.”

  Never did a gimlet look more beautiful, more icy green and clear.

  “I’m a little meshuga without question,” I said.

  “Excuse me?”

  “I’m not playing with a full deck of cards.”

  When I tapped a temple his eyes came alive.

  “I see.”

  Then he laughed and rested both his hands on the counter, one on either side of the gimlet as if confronting it.

  “You’re a funny guy. What’re you down here for?”

  “What does it look like?”

  “A woman?”

  “What else? Maybe you saw her at the bar.”

  And I described Dolores.

  “She’s been down here a few times,” he confirmed. “She only drinks soda water with grenadine.”

  “I suppose she was with her beau.”

  “Not that I saw. A bit young for you, though. I’d give that one a miss.”

  “When do you call it quits on that front? The madness goes on and on and then you drop dead. Hopefully anyway.”

  “Sure, it’s better that way. She’s probably down here for the Carnival at this time of year; most people are.”

  I ordered a second gimlet and asked him to make the lime a little weaker. Tepoztlán, Yautepec. I would be throwing myself into the dark and it was a wonderful prospect.

  “Then when is the Carnival?” I said.

  “Tomorrow. You should go. You may not find your girl, but you’ll have a good time.”

  I went back to my room half-snockered and called my employers. We hadn’t spoken in a while and I was due to deliver an update before their patience gave out and my fee with it. I had rehearsed my little speech quite thoroughly two nights before and now it came out with a convincing ring. I explained with cold attention to detail how Zinn had been killed in Guanajuato and how thereafter the trail had gone cold. I explained the whole thing from beginning to end, a long monologue. They sat through it patiently. The money had disappeared, the principal plotter was in hell, and I was alone in a hotel in Mexico with nothing more to do. I wanted to go home.

  “But what about the wife?” one of them burst out.

  “She has vanished into thin air. It’s her country, of course. Maybe she has the money or maybe she doesn’t. I’m at a loss to know either way. I feel like I’ve done as much as I can. I am going to ask the Mexican police to forward their own report and you can see for yourselves. I’m sorry I never got to the bottom of it for you. C’est la vie, as they say in Mexico. That’s French, if you didn’t know.”

  “They don’t speak French in Mexico.”

  “Don’t they? Ah, well. I’ll be damned. I’ve been speaking it all the time and everyone’s happy. It’s all the same to me. Aside from that, I’ll be coming home tomorrow.”

  “And you didn’t find any trace of our money?”

  “Money’s such a slippery thing, isn’t it?”

  “Is that a no?”

  “Not a single note. It’s a tragic end to a happy vacation, but we’ll all survive to fight again another day. I’m finished. Would you like a receipt?”

  TWENTY-EIGHT

  When the road to Tepoztlán dipped down on the mountains’ far side on the road to Cuernavaca, the rain stopped and I arrived at a colonial town in a valley shadowed by sheer hillsides and karsts covered with cream-flowered shaving brush trees. It was midday and the peaks were submerged in operatic mists. I walked by myself into the town center with my shoulder bag, the streets surrounded by gardens with dark volcanic walls and the sound of human voices dominant. Once again, they were speaking Nahua. I found the posada, where they had a room for me. It was an old villa with liver-colored walls and rooms set around a ground-floor terrace; the owner was a woman of opulent dimensions and the dark-green eyes of Iberia. Casually, I asked about the Carnival and about the other guests. Was it a famous Carnival and so was the hotel full?

  It was, she admitted, but only for the Carnival days. Everyone was headed to Yaupetec in the afternoons. Would I
care to book my group taxi now?

  “I am waiting for a friend to arrive from the capital. Perhaps you could check to see if she has arrived yet. Mrs. Linder.”

  She looked through the book without much haste and didn’t see the name.

  “Does she go by another name?”

  I tried Dolores, Araya, and the two combined. Nothing.

  “I see. She’s a woman of about thirty—”

  And I described her.

  “Unfortunately the guests don’t describe themselves before they arrive. Maybe she’s coming down with a married man and doesn’t want it to be known. Or are you the married man?”

  “A ring has never darkened my finger,” I lied.

  “I’m sure it’s not true. Such a handsome man all the same—”

  For a moment old quicksilver dashed through the veins, but almost as soon as it did it came to a halt again. A sudden wind whipping through a ruin, ruffling the dust.

  “But meanwhile,” she went on, “I can let you know when someone like that arrives. Would you like me to do that discreetly?”

  “You read my mind!”

  “You don’t run a hotel for twenty years without being a mind reader.”

  “It must be the least of your talents.”

  I went up to the room and lay in a bed with draped mosquito nets. The time has passed, I thought, and all that’s left is empty plates. But couldn’t the last days also be the time of Carnivals? Carnivals were where old men could shine a little behind their masks and pretend that their vital spirits still worked. By nightfall, fires had started up in the wide cement square in front of the church, and I went out in my crumpled panama to take a stroll. Zapatista protesters were standing around their bonfires, and the walls were covered with their red graffiti. Traidores fuera! But who were the traitors? High on the sierra above the town the white pyramid of the ancestors could still be seen. The seat of the pulque god “two-rabbit” Tepoztecatl, god of alcohol and drunkenness. It was a fine divinity to have looking down on me as I sat down in the square and enjoyed the protests with a cactus ice cream. It occurred to me that the revolution had finally begun after all those years. Maybe I had been waiting for it all my life. A revolution, a Carnival, whatever it might be called when all the fireworks go off and the dancing begins. A disorder of the heart that makes the coda the highlight of the song. I had already decided that after the following day, tonight was my last night. Tomorrow I would finally pack my bags and go home. I would head back to La Misión with a mind ready for fishing and naps. And tequila. I went into a cantina by the square, a hellhole filled with farmers whose eyes had already wandered off into another world. There would be no song left to sing after midnight.